A FRENCH-AFRICAN QUARREL WITH THE FORMER COLONISER. UNE QUERELLE FRANÇAFRICAINE AVEC L’ANCIEN COLONISATEUR

THE relationship remains healthy, officials were quick to stress. It was a “non-event for us”, French diplomats insisted. France continues to be “extremely attached” to its relationship with Gabon, the foreign ministry made clear. After hurried meetings in Paris and Libreville on January 18th, any “misunderstanding” appears to have been quietly resolved. Nevertheless, the short spat between the central African nation and its former colonial ruler was revealing.

It began with a remark made by the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, during a television interview on the evening of January 16th. Asked whether the president of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, had been democratically elected in 2009 when he took office, Mr Valls replied, “No, not as I understand it.” The Gabonese government, furious that Mr Valls appeared to be questioning the president’s legitimacy, responded by announcing that the country’s ambassador in Paris, Germain Ngoyo Moussavou, was to be immediately recalled to Libreville, the Gabonese capital.

By now he was used to it. This was the third time Mr Moussavou has been recalled—before being swiftly reinstated—since his appointment by Mr Bongo in 2011. However, at the January 18th meeting in the Hôtel Matignon, the prime minister’s official Paris residence, Mr Moussavou is reported to have tempered his boss’s hotheadedness, telling Mr Valls that he had already been scheduled to return to Gabon anyway. By January 18th the matter seemed to have been forgotten.

Why did Mr Bongo react like this? Mr Valls’s comments, diplomatically tactless as they were, hardly seemed worth the response. They were, one French diplomat suggests, made flippantly and little more than a “joke”. (Mr Valls was, after all, being interviewed by a French comedian.) And few Gabonese would have been watching the interview, anyway, since it was on French national television.

Mr Bongo, however, is nervous. A presidential election in August is fast approaching. The Gabonese political opposition, led by Jean Ping, a former African Union chairman, quickly seized on the French prime minister’s words, reminding citizens that Mr Bongo’s 2009 election victory, in which he succeeded his father, Omar Bongo, Gabon’s president since 1967, had been contentious. Human-rights groups at the time said that the poll had been marred by violence, and allegations of electoral fraud were widespread. Mr Bongo, who was the defence minister in his father’s cabinet for ten years, won less than 42% of the vote.

This time round the president is sensitive to anything that could be seen to bolster the opposition’s chances in an election that experts expect to be close-fought and edgy. “After the questions over 2009, he hopes to be re-elected this year in a poll whose democratic legitimacy no one will question,” says Paul Melly of Chatham House, a London-based think-tank. Moreover, Mr Bongo knows that Gabonese citizens today are far less attached to France than previous generations once were, and less inclined to support a president backed by officials in Paris. His January 17th provocation was both a political gesture directed at the electorate and a swipe at an opposition that has long claimed France played a part in helping him succeed his father.

But Mr Bongo’s reaction was also in keeping with a pattern of behaviour since he took office in 2009. Like many of his fellow citizens—and unlike his father, who was every inch the Francophile—Mr Bongo has little attachment to the former colonial power. “Ali is simply not a prisoner of ‘la Francophonie’”, says Roland Marchal, a Gabon expert at Sciences-Po in Paris. He does not enjoy the close personal relationships with French politicians that his father cultivated. He declared in an Independence Day address in 2010 that France was no longer Gabon’s exclusive partner, as he announced big investment deals with India and Singapore. In 2012 he said Gabon would follow in Rwanda’s footsteps and replace French with English as its official language. Some experts expect the country to apply soon for membership of the Commonwealth.

Added to this are Mr Bongo’s long-standing frustrations with his French partners. He is irritated that French judges are investigating his family’s wealth and looking into assets it owns in France. He was furious when, in August last year, his chief-of-staff, Maixent Accrombessi, was briefly detained at a Paris airport on suspicion of corruption. In reply, Mr Bongo issued a statement saying France was trying to “attack” Gabon.

France’s fiercely independent judiciary has been a thorn in Mr Bongo’s side. But he is not alone: ruling dynasties in Congo-Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea are also being pursued by French investigators. Ultimately, Mr Bongo’s difficult relationship with his French partners is indicative of the current state of “la Françafrique”—the web of close personal and political connections between French presidents and the leaders of allied former colonies. François Hollande, the French president, has none of the ties that his predecessors maintained with African leaders. He has taken French business into markets that were not originally part of French Africa. All this while Mr Bongo is himself trying to diversify his relationships away from France.

Nevertheless, both countries still have mutual interests, if not much mutual affection. Gabon is dependent upon French aid and investment. And France needs a reliable ally in the region: Gabon hosts a key French military base and has contributed troops to peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic for many years. There is also a large French expatriate community in the country, with important French business interests, notably oil. France and Gabon will continue to argue. But they cannot afford to fall out.

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